Ex-Educator Double-Dipping Costs Million$

Retired brought back to fight brain drain

Receive the latest local updates in your inbox

Last year, the San Diego Unified School District offered its veteran employees a golden handshake. The deal was, If they left, they would be paid one year of their salary. More than 1,000 workers took the deal, which equaled $24 million worth of salary payments.

Replacing its most expensive, experienced workers with newer ones -- or not replacing them at all -- was projected to save the school system more then $41 million last year and spared San Diego Unified from layoffs as it faced a $93 million deficit.

A year later, though, reports the voiceofsandiego.org, it's come to light that San Diego Unified paid almost $2.3 million to some of temporarily rehire employees that it paid to leave. In fact, tthe district rehired about one-third of the workers who took the buyout, according to the online news site.

For it's part, the district said says costly brain drain is no different than hiring hourly workers, which it does regularly.

"In the vast majority of cases we would have used the same amount of hourly help anyway," district officials told the voiceofsandiego.org.